Originally Posted By: Yolk Sac
Originally Posted By: patcinkc
i just worry that maybe its not too many bass at all and its just all not enough food. if i cull too many fish would it have an adverse affect down the roads like in a few years time.

"Too many bass" and "not enough food" are, in most ponds, different expressions of the same idea. Every pond is a little different, and no generalization applies universally, but most would agree that removing every skinny bass you catch, and probably all fish below a certain length, is probably not going to have any adverse effects--keep going until you see them fattening up.

I remove 150-250 annually from a 3 acre pond, and it's really just barely enough.



Correct. There is no way (unless you had very deep pockets AND you had a huge filtration system for the pond water) that you can add enough forage fish for the LMB. Each LMB will eat 10# of fish to gain one pound in weight (as a generality). So, lets do some math.

If a pond that is not aerated and there isn't supplemental feeding going on (i.e. fish pellets) it can support roughly 300 pounds of fish per surface acre. So, lets say ALL your LMB are 1#, and 75% of the fish population is LMB. In a 3 acre lake that means 225# of LMB. Now you would have to add 2,250 pounds of forage fish to get all those bass from 1 pound to 2 pounds. BUT, since the carrying capacity of the pond is only 900 pounds, what are you going to do to keep the water quality up and the fish from croaking from low oxygen levels? Plus, you'd have to stock more than that actual number due to natural mortality, etc.

So, the answer is take out a lot of bass.

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3/4 to 1 1/4 ac pond LMB, SMB, PS, BG, RES, CC, YP, Bardello BG, (RBT & Blue Tilapia - seasonal).